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Speaker takes away the hassle usually associated with creating podcasts, and puts everything you need into one simple app. Here's how to use it...

Speaker is one of the very few apps on the Android Market that allows you to create, broadcast and publish new podcasts wherever you are, as long as your Android device is connected to a Wi-Fi network. All of this can be done for free, and is one of the main reasons Spreaker has gained such a large following of podcast-enthused Android users in the short amount of time that it has been available. As well as recording podcasts, Speaker also boasts a comprehensive library of other podcasts for you to tune in to all of which you can track through a Twitter-styled follow' system. The choice is so varied that you might find yourself listening to one podcast in Angola, and then in the next instance, someone on the other side of the planet in Japan.

This tutorial will guide you through the various menus of Spreaker and show you the basics of getting started with recording a podcast, We'll also demonstrate how you can practice recording your voice, how to do a podcast live on air, as well as give you some information and helpful tips about browsing through other people's podcasts. The tutorial itself isn't difficult to complete, and once you have nailed the following steps, there's no doubt that you'll be creating your own audio masterpieces in no time.

1. OPEN SPREAKER

Open the Spreaker app after downloading it from the Android Market. The main menu gives you four different options. For the purpose of that tutorial, tap Broadcast to continue.

2. BROADCAST MENU

The Broadcast menu gives you the three main ways of recording a podcast through Spreaker. Press the Record Episode option to record e practice podcast before going live.

3. RECORD EPISODE

Dress the Record button to start recording your voice. The right-hand side of the app will then show the audio levels picked up by your internal microphone. Hit Stop when you're finished.

4. EDIT PODCAST DETAILS

inter a title for the podcast you just recorded and listen back to it by pressing the Play button, Hit the Publish or Delete options, depending on what you want to do with your recording.

5. EPISODE DETAILS

From the broadcast menu, press 'Live Broadcast' inter a title for your podcast by tapping the New Show button. This title will make your podcast searchable by other Spreaker users.

6. LIVE RECORDING

Press the Record button to begin a live broadcast Once finished, hit the Stop button and wait for it to process. Your podcast will now be fully searchable by the title you assigned it earlier.

Often, after an app has been released in the App Store, it gets a boost in the rankings for a week and then slowly slips down in the rankings, before gradually getting lost.

I’ve seen this happen with every app I’ve released. I know this is a really frustrating and painful experience because I felt helpless when it happened.

One day, I came across a post that was discussing something called ASO, which I soon learnt stood for ‘app store optimization’.

Although I was familiar with the old fashioned SEO (search engine optimization), I had never heard about ASO, and so I decided to start researching it further.

After a day, I had discovered three important things:

ASO is crucial for downloads.

Indie developers can’t survive without it.

The tool that will help you achieve higher ratings, more downloads, and thus more $, is named SensorTower.

Now, next I will show you how I used SensorTower’s free plan to boost one of my apps from 1 download per day to 12 per day!

Researching the Relevant Keywords

The first thing I needed to do was to find out what keywords were relevant for my app. My app was initially named ‘iFast’, which, in my opinion, was a catchy name, but the reality was different…

To my disappointment, I discovered (with the help of Sensor Tower) that no one actually searched for the phrase “iFast”. I realized that I needed to find a keyword to use in my app’s title that people would actually search for!

So, I started to brainstorm relevant keywords and I came up with the idea that people might search for ‘intermittent fasting’, as it was relevant to my app.

So I typed this phrase into the Sensor Tower keyword tracking tool, and, to my surprise, I saw a keyword that had good traffic, low competition and few apps. I also typed in “fasting diet” and this one didn’t look too shabby either.

Checking My Rankings

To my disappointment, I was not ranking for these keywords at all (see image). In fact, I was doing really poor, and my app was in last position both for the iPhone and the iPad, which sucked big time!

However, I knew that by adding those keywords into my app name, I would be able to catapult my app into the first eight in the rankings at the very least, as the competition was really low!

As I didn’t want to change too many variables, and was instead intent just on testing one thing at a time, I decided to use those two keywords as my app name, and after playing around with them for a while, I came up with the name ‘Intermittent Fasting Diet Tracker’.

As I had a small bug fixed, this update came in handy, as I was able to resubmit the freshly-titled app along with the small bug correction.

The Result

After a week, the app was accepted with the new name, and immediately I began to see an increase in downloads. Beforehand, I had usually received around one download per day, but suddenly I was achieving 10 paid downloads, which really freaked me out!

I immediately logged onto my free trial account of SensorTower and found the reason for my increased amount of downloads!

As you can see in the image below, I currently rank as number 4 for iPhone and number 2 for iPad for the keyword “fasting diet”.

However, even better still, for the keywords ‘intermittent fasting’, I was ranking as number 2 for iPhone, and, amazingly, as number 1 for the iPad!

Lesson Learned

As you can see, I have not used rocket science to come up with the keywords for my app. Instead, I sat down for about 15 minutes and this investment increased my paid downloads for one specific app from 30 per month to over 300 each month.

The next thing I am going to do is to research the keywords for my app for iTunes as well, as I am sure it will significantly boost my download frequency there too!

Seriously, if you are still not using SensorTower, which is considered by many to be the best of the best ASO tool on the market, you are really missing out on a huge opportunity to get more downloads, increase visibility in the app store, and, of course, increase your earnings as well.

Android games are the best mobile games out there, hands down. There's nothing like being able to play fantastic games on the go, passing the time in any way that you see fit. What more could you honestly want? Oh, a challenge? You want a challenge? Fine. We're going to give you a game today that we found pretty challenging. It's called Alien Assault Tower Defense TD, and it absolutely rocks. You're about to find out why.

One thing that we really enjoyed when we tested Alien Assault Tower Defense TD in the office was all of the levels. Tired of games that feel half finished because there's only like four levels? Well, there's good news: you have 25 levels to beat here. There's not just one enemy type that you have to beat, either. You have to battle for the future of Planet Earth by fighting off aliens. The graphics are pretty slick as well -- as you're battling for the future of the world, you're going to have to handle more than just one enemy, and more than just one challenge. There's an option to remove ads as well. If you're like us and get distracted easily, this is something that would be best avoided at all costs.

You have to think about the ability of any Android game to actually entertain you. Is this going to be a game that requires a super amount of skill? Probably not. It's not up there with say, advanced physics or anything like that. But if you're bored at the doctor's office and you can't stand the idea of reading another magazine, well -- this one's for you, most definitely.

Arcade games are fun because you get to always have a challenge. Can you beat all of the levels, aware of the clock the entire time? Well, that just depends on your level of patience. Some will get to beat the entire game, while others will be frustrated. Either way, you will definitely be entertained! Download Alien Assault Tower Defense TD today!

Trying to pass the time when you're on the go can be a lot more difficult than you might have imagined. Even though there are a lot of different games out there, it can be hard to find the one that's really going to be interesting without being more challenging than what it's worth. If you have your Android phone handy and you want to get an app that really rocks, this is the one for you.

We looked at the EyeSpy Hidden Objects Quest game, a captivating and super colorful game where you have to really put your concentration skills to the test. Can you find all of the hidden objects? It's really not as easy as you might imagine! You see, your character is a cute bunny that has to work off of a single clue in order to find the objects in question. You have a bunch of random objects, but you don't get to just sit and think about it all day long: you only get so much time on the clock to find all of the items. For us, we really liked that it was a time based challenge. It's far too easy to find everything if you don't have the pressure of time.

But time changes the game, and in a good way. As long as you're willing to focus, you can beat the levels. But don't think that you only have a few to beat. This game comes with plenty of new levels to go with. You just need to make sure that you stay committed, because the later ones are really tough!

All in all, we definitely enjoyed this little app. It's available right now in the Google Play store, so why not check it out? After all, every Android owner knows that sometimes you just need a good time waster app to get from the dentist's office and back again!

Preparation for the 1Z0-045 Oracle Database 10g DBA New Features for Oracle 8i OCPs should begin with the exam guide itself. This is where a good grasp of the topics and objectives that will be covered in the seventy-eight questions will begin.

The guide is where a breakdown of the topics such as Oracle Server security, online operations, memory management, manageability infrastructure, and loading and unloading data begins. It takes all the topics and shows the objectives whether they be descriptions, monitoring, managing, using or creating. A minimum score of seventy-three percent will be the requirement to pass. A solid place to start acquiring these skills and knowledge is through taking the Oracle Database 10g: New Features for Oracle8i DBAs.

During this course the following topics are just a sample of what will be covered; backup and recovery, globalization support, resource manager enhancements, tablespace management, installation, and application tuning.

It will take a minimum of seventy-three percent to pass the exam and apply the credit towards the Oracle Database 10g Administrator Professional certification. Before taking the exam a suggested way to determine if the knowledge is up to par is by taking practice exams. These practice exams from ExamTrace can determine areas that need more work before the actual exam.

Location, location, location. Even if you aren't in the real estate business, you've probably heard at least once that location really does matter. You want to always make sure that you're going to be able to keep things interesting. We like Android apps that keep things interesting, so when we discovered GeoCam, we had to check it out.

GeoCam is an app that makes it easy to save the senor data of your device to a log file, calculating the coverage of the site. The coverage will always be a ratio of the track covering area to the area of the site (expressed in percentages, of course)

Sounds complicated? GeoCam is all about giving geographic data to photos. This gives you a lot of actual power -- you can show the distance between specific objects if you take a series of photos.

There's a lot of power in this little app. For one, you can make a geophoto of just about anything that you want. You could make a photo of an object that intrigues you. Road trip anyone? Looking at what photos really mean on a deeper level could change the way we travel. After all, we're always rushing through life. This could be a great way to remember locations that you would have otherwise forgotten about because you didn't have time to write everything down.

Real estate investors definitely will get a big kick out of this app, because they can send a Geocam Report to show properties that could really lead to big profits. It's much easier to take a picture than to try to write down all of the details of a property that catches your eye.

What we liked best is that each GeoCam report is in PDF format. PDF is a format that's viewable on just about every device that we can think of. You won't have trouble sharing data, that's for sure.

Don't forget about GeoLog when you're evaulating this app. GeoLog 2 lets you sync with the logs from photos made with any camera. this is the heart of making geophotos. You then will turn around and use GeoCam to view the geophotos in all of their nerdy, scientific glory. How cool is that?

If you do decide to download this free app for the Android, you'll find a lot of functionality. Don't get overwhelmed -- there's ample help available if you want to take advantage of it. Why not check it out today and see if you like it? You'll be glad that you did!

There's always a new app coming out, and there's never a bad time to highlight them. Sometimes we get bogged down with the sheer amount of apps to be covered, but hey -- it is what it is. We definitely wanted to cover Flipboard, especially now that it's being placed over to Android. This is an app that started out on the iPad scene and was ported over.

What does it do that's so earth shattering? Well, it makes reading things on your tablet a lot more streamlined. Everything is turned into a magazine like view that you can flip through -- hence the name. Facebook feeds? No problem. Google+? No problem. Twitter? Too easy. YouTube? You bet.

But what also makes Flipboard interesting is that it scales to cover both the 7 inch tablets and the 10 inch tablets. The tablet experience isn't as solid across different sizes as many would like, but it's getting better. The app handles various screen sizes with ease -- not having a problem with taking advantage of widescreen displays. It's all good as far as Flipboard is concerned.

Flipboard HQ indicated that it worked with Samsung closely to make sure that the app performs great on both the Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Note, but any other Android tablet will do nicely. This means you Nook and Kindle people can join the party as well.

Google is really trying to get developers on board for this push to make the tablet experience more interesting. Will it stick? Perhaps -- but only time will really tell what users have to look forward to.

Flipboard is a free app that you should definitely download and check out today. Have fun!

2013 is here, but that doesn't mean that we're not already on the hunt for great Android apps. What you will find is that we have looked up the best Android applications for your needs, but these lists are subjective. We’re going to list what we think is a good fit, and then we'll turn things over to you. Check it out below first, then sound off in the comments:

JuiceDefender:

When it comes to automation apps, Android is where it's at. You can make your phone do a lot of really cool stuff -- all without alerting you, if that's what you want.

We covered the Nexus 4, the 7, and now it's time to go ahead and talk about the Nexus 10. In our traditional fashion, we staggered the review to catch any type of updates that might have come out. Bleeding edge tech definitely has its share of bugs, we have to admit -- we've been dying to cover the Nexus 10. Google has really outdone themselves with this tablet, but we figured that we'd give you a full review. Catching technology after it's had a chance to "age" also gives you a break on the price, but you're still going to find that full retail value exists for the Nexus 10 in most cases.

Let's go ahead and start with the obvious: this is a 10.1-inch panel with a stunning 2560x1600 resolution. You might remember that resolution first with the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. The tablet itself is manufactured by Samsung, which isn't a bad partnership.

You'll fight a 5MP camera that can handle 1080p recording, along with an LED flash. Sorry tech fans, we know you're tired of LED flashes but it looks like they are definitely here to stay. Nothing we can really do about all of that. There's two physical controls -- the volume rocker and a power/lock button. However on the left of the tablet edge you're going to find micro-USB and a headphone jack (3.5mm). There's a pogo pin connector and micro-HDMI along the bottom. We really find ourselves excited about micro-HDMI, which means that we can beam our stuff to a bigger display -- like that 60" flat screen you picked up on Black Friday or as a totally sweet Christmas present.

The speakers really carry this tablet, and there's also another camera -- this time 1.9MP that's capable of 720p video recording.

As far as connectivity goes, it's only Wi-Fi. There's some talk about expanding this to actual cellular tech, but it's not coming anytime soon. There's support for b/g/n, but no 'a'. I guess it's time for the 802.11a people to upgrade already.

You have some power under here -- a 1.7GHz chip, which has dual-core configuration even though it could easily go quad-core in the future. There's a dedicated GPU along with 2GB of RAM. You can go with either 16GB or 32GB storage. It's not expandable, so if you really get worried about space -- go with the 32GB.

GPS, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC also fill in for you, which isn't a bad thing either.

The Display

We had to really jump back to the display. It really is a thing of beauty. There are a lot of pixels involved in a small 10.1-inch LCD panel. Certainly more than HDTV would have, and that's at 1080p. The display is incredibly sharp -- graphics pop, and text is very sharp. The user interface practically begs you to navigate it.

Sometimes, it's a good point to look at exactly what you're getting when you're talking about something. In this case, we're talking about Android 4.1, code named Jelly Bean.

Jelly Bean brings some interesting features to the table, so we decided to create this guide to bring you up to speed.

Note: at the time of this guide, 4.2 has come out, but there was enough changes that it will have a guide of its own. Thanks.

Speed is one of the top concerns of Jelly Bean. Everything is supposed to feel fast, fluid, and smooth. Each screen should be moved through like flipping through the pages of a well loved novel. There are some performance boosts, including faster responses when going between apps, as well as great rendering through the whole system. Vsync and triple buffering take care of that for you.

It's all about responsiveness as a whole. Jelly Bean is taking things to the next level by adding in reactive and uniform touch responses. Your device's CPU can be raised or lowered based on how you're interacting with your device. How cool is that?

It gets better, of course.

Accessibility

Accessibility has been a hot button issue in Planet Android land, for good reason. Open access to everyone is very important, and it would definitely make waves for Android to lead the way to a new era of accessibility in 2013 and beyond.

For people that have a hard time seeing the screen's text due to small fonts, you can enlarge instantly. What more could you want than that?

Actually, a screenreader would be nice. Meet TalkBack, a screenreader for Android that supports gestures to the fullest. There's also BrailleBack, which gives better accessibility options in the Braille category.

Android Beam also makes a big splash. You can easily share all of your photos and videos. To activate Beam, you can just pair your phone or tablet to any Bluetooth enabled device that supports Simple Secure Pairing -- just tap the devices together to activate the magic.

There's better support for USB audio docks, something that many Android users have been looking forward.

The browser got a major update in Jelly Bean, focusing hard on HTML5. It's the new web standard and many sites are switching to HTML5 full stop. It's good to know that android will give the end user the ability to experience the full richness of HTML5 while they are on the go. HTML5 video support has been enhanced a great deal.

Calendar got an update as well -- content fades in and out, animations are there to remind you of important tasks, and you can quickly swipe through days. If you've given your event a specific color, it's going to keep that color on the phone.

The today button on the action bar will show you the events of the day -- and remind you of what's around the corner. You can even auto-email guests of events to let them know that you’re on your way to a particular event.

Camera is looking great as well -- you can swipe from the camera viewfinder to review photos that you just took. You can also view photos in Gallery through filmstrip mode, flipping through photos with ease.

Data usage has gotten better than ever -- you can disable background data usage on certain Wi-Fi locations by making them mobile hotspots. Android will automatically detect this from then on, saving you precious data -- perfect for those that aren't on an unlimited data plan.

The keyboard is all about customization. Tired of QWERTY? Go QWERTZ, AZERTY, or even Dvorak!

This leads to messaging perfectly. The new notifications display gives you the full text of incoming SMS messages -- something that has long annoyed Android users for a while now. You will also see the full photo in a notification. This is great when you really don't want to have to open up the full app just to see a quick message.

Networking updates? Yes, please! Jelly Bean lets you make sure that you avoid bad Wi-Fi networks that have poor connections. You can stay on mobile data and get the best connection. Who really wants to deal with some wimpy data line when you have LTE, honestly?

There is a People app that truly makes your phone quite social. You can retrieve high resolution photos automatically and display them as you're looking through to find contacts on the fly. This helps you really connect with who is in your network and who isn't. You can also add new contacts much faster than before.

The phone app got some updating as well. When you miss a call, a new notification will easily let you call them right back or even send a quick SMS. This is really smooth, and we like that a great deal.

The best thing that you can do for yourself would be to check out the full list of features at Google Android headquarters, then see if your handset has an upgrade to 4.1 -- you will not regret it at all!